A hefty accident suffered by Ferdinando Monfardini during second free practice ahead of this weekend's Spa 24 Hours failed to derail the BMS Scuderia Italia outfit as it battled back to seal 14th place on the 46-car grid for the round-the-clock classic.
The team's mechanics worked all night long to repair the Aston Martin DBR9, to allow Monfardini and team-mates Fabio Babini who set the time Jamie Davies and Diego Alessi to line up on the seventh row, three spots and just under two seconds adrift of the sister entry of Enrico Toccacelo, Alex Frassineti, Gabriele Lancieri and Riccardo Ragazzi.
The Italian squad's Porsche 911 GT3 RSR driven by Emmanuel Collard, Marc Lieb and Matteo Malucelli lodged the second-quickest time in the GT2 class in the hands of the former and will line up 16th overall.
Scuderia Ecosse, meanwhile, is heading into the race in confident spirits, after placing both its
Ferrari 430 GT2s comfortably inside the top ten on the class grid. Tim Mullen driving alongside Jarek Janis, Tomas Enge and new addition Jonny Kane, the latter enjoying his first taste of Ferrari GT action will line up seventh in GT2 and 21st outright, with Andrew Kirkaldy placing the sister car he shares with Chris Niarchos and Tim Sugden one spot and just over two tenths of a second further back.
I'm a little bit disappointed with qualifying, Mullen reflected afterwards. Even though we weren't going for pole I think we could have challenged for third or fourth. I never quite got a clear run on new tyres, but I think we're looking good for the race. If AF Corse have a smooth race they will be hard to beat, but we have a great chance of beating all the rest.
I was unlucky with traffic on both my sets of tyres, added Kirkaldy, but that's the nature of this race with almost 50 cars trying to set a time on what is a short circuit compared to Le Mans. The speed differential of the GT3 cars makes it very difficult here, but it's ok as your starting position makes very little difference to the outcome of the race.
